Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Mykhailo Khorev while presenting the Program of Ukraine's presiding over the European Union’s Strategy for the Danube Region spoke about the challenges facing the Ministry in implementing the Strategy.

Mykhailo Khorev said: "In the field of environmental protection, several areas of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region have been determined. Their implementation will not only improve the state of the environment in the Danube region, but also bring Ukraine's European integration closer."

According to him, those are:

• surface water improvement;
• environmental risk monitoring;
• conservation of biodiversity, landscapes and air and soil quality.

According to the action plan for the implementation of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region in Ukraine, the Ministry of Eсology and Natural Resources will put into action the following:

monitoring, introduction of integrated water resources management of the Danube basin as well as flood risk management;

adaptation to climate change in the Danube river basin;

protection and restoration of wetland ecosystems in the Danube Delta, creation of new and expansion of existing territories and objects of the nature reserve fund;

conservation of biodiversity, restoration and protection of unique aquatic organisms of the Danube river and the north-western part of the Black Sea.

"Ukraine, together with Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, is implementing a fairly wide range of works, which are currently seeing an active phase. They are aimed at the development of surface water quality monitoring, forecasting and prevention of catastrophic floods, development of management plans, research and conservation of biodiversity, etc. I expect that we will complete all projects on time and successfully, as was planned," said Mykhailo Khorev.

Among those are:

SAFETISZA - joint measures to prevent floods and inland flooding between the Tisza and the Tur rivers;

FloodUzh - joint measures to prevent natural disasters in the cross-border basin of the Uzh River;

TiszaMonitorNet - creation of a transboundary water quality monitoring network in the Upper Tisza basin;

Ukraine's project proposal "Assessment of the status of migratory wetland bird populations in the Danube region (analysis of threats posed by human economic activities, development of an action plan for the conservation of the most vulnerable species)" was approved. However, it has not been implemented yet due to the lack of interested partners.

It should be reminded that this year Ukraine became the first non-EU country to chair the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region from November 2021 to October 2022.

The priorities of Ukraine's presidency are:

• Sustainable development of the Danube region: decarbonization and economic transformation.
• Development of human capital and labor markets.

The Danube Strategy is a platform for the cooperation of 14 countries in the Danube region. The Ukrainian part of the Strategy covers Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia regions.